How Viking Music Sounded | Forgotten Instruments and Nordic Sounds

In this video we are going to talk about one of my favorite aspects of the Viking Age. Music. Join me on this adventure and we will learn about archaeological evidence, replicas of Viking Age musical instruments and discuss the role of music in the Viking Age. So grab yourself your favorite drink or snack and let's begin the adventure. Music. I am going to the reconstructed Viking town of Ribe at the Ribe Viking Center to meet up with Jens who specializes in historical instruments. He does research on the sources and he reconstructs instruments and he spends a lot of his time at the Ribe Viking Center sharing his experience and his knowledge to the visitors. Jens has agreed to meet me here and help me understand the role of music in the Viking Age better and maybe let me try to play one of his instruments to see if I can make real Viking music with my own two hands. I have spent a lot of my time as a musician singing folk songs and telling stories so I am really excited to learn more about the Viking Age music. I have met Jens many times here at the Ribe Viking Center and often on a sunny day you will find him sitting in the shadow under a thatched roof of a reconstructed Viking house surrounded by people, both visitors and other reenactors as well, bringing the Viking Age to life in front of our eyes and our ears with his very own unique style with his instrument and with his music. So I guess it goes without saying that I am very excited to meet with Jens here and learn more. Jens, could you present yourself and maybe tell us a little bit about what is your connection with this Viking Age music and where did it all start? Well, my name is Jens and I live in Ribe. I am very fortunate to live in this beautiful old city and I have always been interested in history and especially the Viking Age. Well, as a child it was very fascinating and then suddenly I got that urge to, well, I really want to be a part of that Viking reenactment scene and of course, you know, we have this wonderful Viking Center out here. I would like to do something that is apart from the others and since I always loved music, I have been in a real rock'n'roll band in my young days so I love music and I thought, well, I'll try to dive into the instruments from the Viking Age. What did they have and what do we know about it? And then I started with building my first lyre and oh boy, that was a crappy piece of wood. But I got started and I could feel, well, if I continue, I'll get better. You always get better at things when you just do it again. So I started to build another one and another one and suddenly it started to look nice and sound nice. And then I built another instrument, a talharp. It's not really Viking Age but, you know, it evolves and you make more and more and you find more and more out. And then I take my instruments, I take them out here and I play them as good as I can and I found out that very many people come over and say, hey, what is that? That looks so fantastic, it sounds nice. Then I, you know, tell people the history about the instruments in the Viking Age, what we know about them and what we don't know about them. And I found out that very many people are drawn to the music. And, you know, when you're going in a Viking village, you hear all those sounds from animals, people laughing and the smith is hammering his hammer and all the sounds. But then there's some music in the background also that makes a very wonderful combination. Yeah, so that's what I do primarily as a Viking re-enactor. Okay, first of all, it is so nice to be here with you, Jens, and I'm really looking forward to all the things we're going to talk about. But I've been really thinking, is there something general you can say about Viking music? I know we're going to dive into the more specific finds with the instruments in a little while, but is there something general there is to say that would make sense to put into this context now? Let's start with, we don't know very little. Very little we know, because the Vikings or the Scandinavians, they didn't write notes down, they didn't write very much down. So how the music would have sounded like, we have no idea. We simply have no idea. And for me personally, that's a great thing, because then nobody can come and tell me, well, you're not playing it right, and it doesn't sound right, because nobody knows. And you can say, the oldest melody and song we have from Scandinavia is, I dreamt me a dream this night, and that's the oldest song that we have with notes, the medieval notes and the lyrics are written in runes. That's from the 12th century. So that's some hundred years after the Viking age. So that's all we have, really. So nobody really knows how it would sound, but we have the instruments. And we have some instruments that are almost complete, like the trussing in the lyre, and we also have a very intact piece of the fabster pipe. And we have many fragments all over the place, from Scandinavia and also from the Baltics and Eastern Europe. And so we really know a lot about how they looked. And we can also draw, when you have the lyre with six strings, and you have tuning pegs, you can tune the instrument. And that's very important, because if you do the work and make an instrument, then they actually have a very great knowledge about how you tune it, and you can tune it in different ways and make different melodies. So in one sense, it's very advanced, and it's also very primitive if you take a flute, like a reed flute or something like that. So I made a little bag for my flutes. Well, let's start with the beginning, with the bone flute. Well, this is the beginning of all instruments, because already the Neanderthals made bone flutes. And we have finds that is from the Viking Age with the bone flutes. So for sure they had those. And what we can say about flutes in that time is, it's a very simple instrument, so you can easily make one. And the next flute we have here, this is my copy of the Jorvik Pan flute. And this flute was found in the big excavation that they made in York, in Coppergate, and there they found this beautiful little flute. And you can see it's a solid piece of wood, and then the holes are drilled in different depths, thereby making the different tones. And actually this one was tuned in with the A, B, C, D, E. And the beautiful thing about this flute is that it's sturdy, you can drop it on the floor, you can bash it around, and you can hang it around your neck or in your belt. So you always have your little flute ready. And the next instrument in the wind instruments family is this one, and of course this one. Actually they are the same, it's a reed instrument. And you can see here in the end we have a reed, because it is a reed instrument, like a bagpipe, it also uses reeds. Well, the first one, that's the one from Falster, we call it the Falster pipe. And it was found under excavation on the island Falster, it was an old Viking shipyard, and there it lay, the wooden part of it. And it was, of course, when you take it off, and it was made so that you can easily see that something would sit on here, and something would sit in that end, and then you put a reed in it. It's the only explanation how that would work as a wind instrument. And then we have the Lund, that's Sweden. I can't remember exactly how they found it, but it was obviously under excavation, and they found this one from Lund. But they also found an impression that could be interpreted like a piece of leather, a leather bag. So we had a bagpipe. Probably, probably. Wow. But they are not sure, but, well, it would not be a far fetch. Wow, that is really fascinating. Because you can actually, if you take a bagpipe and you would stuff this up, it would work. Yeah, wow. So it survived in some way down the ages. Well, the next one, you could actually say I have no proof that they had this in the Viking Age. But if you go back in Germany, in the early medieval times, they had this, they called a Gemshorn, or Gems flute. Because it is a flute, it's not a blowing horn, and it's a very simple instrument. So I strongly believe that in some form, they also made some cow horn flutes in the Viking Age. But we have not found it, so I can't prove it. We can make the jump to Norway, because there we have the famous sheep's horns, the Gemshorn, or the Bucklehorn. Yeah, the ram's horn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that we know for sure that they had in the Viking Age in Norway for signaling between the valleys and so on, and also for making music. And when you're sitting out there and herding the sheeps, you can sit and play some tunes, and also signaling to the neighbor sheep or cow herd, and maybe, are you lonely? Yeah, you could have whole conversations. Yeah, exactly. But what about this that we see in pop culture? And then I have this image of Viking warriors blowing into a big hollow cow horn to signal battle or something. Is that just Hollywood, or do you think that could have been possible? Actually, I really don't know. But horns have been used for signaling since millennia. And of course, they would have used some horns to signaling from sheep to sheep, or from the leader of the warriors, and say, signaling, we are taking now. Of course, they would have used it. And also, when five sheep are sailing along together, and there's coming fog, how do you know how near and how far the other sheep are? So you definitely have a signaling horn, of course. So this is one of the many things where we have very concrete and solid sources for something, and something just have to be guesswork, but common sense in a way. Such a nice and mellow sound. Well, there's a deep contrast between this mellow sound and the palster pipe. Yeah, for sure, yeah. And this is also very shrill, but you can actually make them, the bigger they get, the more soft, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have the big one left here. This one is called, in Danish and Norwegian, a Seilfløjde. And actually, in the willow, in the spring, the willow is sucking all the water up in these branches. Then you can take a piece of branch, then you knock it all the way, and then you can actually pull the bark whole off. Then you have a tube, a tube of bark, and then you can make a flute. But of course, that is not lasting for very long, maybe two months, then it's crumbling to dust. And the smart people and the historians and a lot of people say that it's a very old instrument. But of course, we have no proof in that sense, that we don't find some crumbling bark from the Viking or Iron Age. But it also is very much still in use in the eastern part of Europe. And this is a modern one made of wood, so it lasts longer. And here's a sound excerpt, some sound from it. So now we have seen a lot of the wind instruments, and it's clear to me that there is evidence from the Viking Age various types of wind instruments, but also way further back in archaeology. And like Jens said, it's one of the oldest, it's the beginning of all instruments. Now we are slowly getting ready to move on to the stringed instruments. And I myself play stringed instruments, so I'm really curious about this part. And I can hear in the background Jens is tuning the instruments up, trying to get them ready. It's a little difficult for us here. It's very cold today, it's a very foggy day, and the humidity in the air is very high. So we have to take some time here and get them all ready. And now we are moving over to this instrument. And first I have to say, this is my interpretation of the Hedeby Gige or Rebek. And why is that? Because if you see the form, the length and everything, the dimensions are like the original. But if you look at the thickness, it's not as thick as the original. And why is that? Because I didn't have a piece of wood that was thick enough. So I thought, what the hell, I try to make one anyway, and see if the sound is bad or anything. But actually, the sound is great, I think. And the Hedeby Gige, Rebek, was from an excavation in Hedeby, Heidelberg, now in the northern part of Germany. Before, it was Danish. And they found it. And actually, the only thing that they found was the bow. There were no tuning pegs, there was no tailpiece, there was actually just the bow. What we can see is that during the procedure of hollowing out the body, at some point, a big chunk of the sides was breaking off. And unfortunately for the maker of the instrument, it meant that he just decided to throw it away. And that's why they found it. So we only have the bow. There's a hole for the tailpiece holding here. There was not drilled any holes for tuning pegs, but of course, he didn't do that, because he threw it away. Now, this instrument is a unica, in that sense that it's the only type of that instrument we have really found in Scandinavia. If you're going to Russia, Ukraine, we find this instrument still today. They're playing this instrument still today. They call it a dukuk. But it's looking almost the same, and played the same way. And I like to use my imagination, because could it be a Scandinavian who went down through the Russian rivers and visited the trading post there, and then he heard somebody play an instrument like this, and then he went home to Hitherby, and maybe he thought to himself, I want to make an instrument like this, because then I can impress all the other villagers in Hitherby by playing this instrument. But unfortunately, it did break for him, and he didn't get that bow. Or maybe he made another one that worked. Who knows? You're saying this because we have an instrument found in the Viking era, but it doesn't really fit in the Viking era. So we assume that this might have been a rare instrument for our local region. Yeah, because if it was a common instrument, we have found more of them. Like the lyre. We have found many lyres over the time, but this is a unica. I guess maybe for our modern brains, it helps us to understand history, or maybe we kind of feel comfortable when the history is put into a context where we can imagine more than just what we see. So I would warn people beforehand, because I just made this instrument, and I must say that those kind of bowed instruments are actually quite difficult to play on, or learning to play on them. So please forgive me that the sound is not really the best, and also the weather is playing in. And now we are coming to the king of the instruments, as I like to say. Because that's, of course, the lyre. And the lyre is, of course, a very, very old instrument. The first findings of lyre, we have the Southern Who lyre, and we have the Trossinger lyre, and we have the Riebel lyre. And the first one, I think, is dating back to the 5th or 6th century. So that's very much Iron Age. And they live up through the Viking Age, and then we come to the early medieval times, where they are changing instruments to something more, what they think is advanced. But it's a very old instrument. The lyre is, at one point, a very sophisticated instrument, but again, a very simple instrument. The reason that I say it's the king of the instruments is, first of all, it takes a long time and resources to make an instrument like this. With Viking Age tools, it takes a long time to make a beautiful instrument like this. And it's also very sophisticated because it has tuning pegs. And that means you can tune a lyre very precise, and you can also tune it in different ways. So that gives us a very good idea that if you take the simple wind instrument, the flute and so on, it's easy to make, but you cannot tune it in so many ways. Clearly, you can do that with the lyre. So it's also a very prestigious and high-end instrument. But at the same time, the Riebel Lyre was found in a totally common merchant house. Not a jarl, not a king, but a merchant, a trader who had a lyre. And therefore, we can say, well, yes, it's a very prestigious and high-end instrument because it takes time and money to make. But at the same time, we have found one in a totally normal merchant trading house in Riebel. So that's a new thing that we know now. So Rasmus, I have to admit, I'm cheating a little bit because in the Viking Age and Iron Age, they would use sheep's gut as strings. Oh yes, natural material. Natural. And I like to take my instruments out in rain and sun. And we know when it's moist like today, the strings will expand. And when the sun comes, it will extract and crimp, shrimp together. And you can go and tune the damn thing all the time. I really don't like that. So I'm putting Nile gut. It's an artificial gut. I know them from my banjo as well. Yeah. And actually, the sound is so similar to the real thing that you can't, well, a very skilled ear could maybe hear the difference. But you can play, I tune it one time and it stays. Yes, I suppose that is one of these calculated compromises every reenactor needs to make at some point in the field. Because it also has to be practical. And I know you use these instruments in all kinds of weather, like you said, and you have to have them in tune for displaying them and giving examples for the public and the other reenactors. So I totally understand that. I do. Because people are coming and, wow, what are you doing? They want to hear it. Then you, oh, wait, wait, wait. I have to do, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then people are going away. They're gone. So that's it. Most people will notice when they hear a lyre, it's very similar to a harp. Yeah. And most people, all people love the lyre because it has a nice, soothing sound. It's like velvet. Yeah, exactly. When Jens was building the replica of the lyre from the recent excavations in Riede, he was contacted by the local history museum and asked if he could build a replica for them. And of course he did. So if you visit the museum Riedes Wikinger in the town of Riede, a few kilometers from where we are now at the Riede Viking Center, you can see the original remains of the lyre with the replica next to it. The exhibition is made in such a way that you can put your hand through your hole in the glass and try to play the strings of the lyre for yourself. And this instrument... Oh, the lyre is playing alone. This instrument is called a Novogrod Gysli. And this one was found in Novogrod, now Russia, and it's dating to the 1030s. So it's clearly a Viking Age era instrument, but we have never found instruments like this in Scandinavia. There's a very charming history to this instrument because on the original, on the back or on the sides, there is a carving, an inscription, that says a nightingale. It's called a nightingale. So the instrument has a very beautiful name. Mine is called Blackbird because it also sings very nice. And the reason I have made an instrument like this is because, first of all, it's a Viking Era instrument and I like to expand not only the Scandinavian stuff. So I really wanted to make this instrument. And another reason that I made this instrument is because, like the Hedeby Rehbeg, it's also an instrument that comes from the eastern part of Europe. This instrument also does, of course. And it's something that maybe some Scandinavians, when they travel down the rivers, maybe encounter this instrument and heard it. So that's also, I like the possibility that it could be heard by a Viking or a Scandinavian. I know before we came here, we were talking if we should include this instrument from the northward. Because, like you said, it's in modern day Russia. And in that sense, it's out of Scandinavia and the geographical context that we normally strive to the Viking Age. But some of these towns in Russia, Novgorod, for example, were founded by early Vikings who made them as trading posts. So there's a lot of Viking connection to this area. And we have things, I have also reconstructions of tools and a pair of leather mittens from Novgorod. So many of the finds there, we use them as inspiration or at least in the outskirts of our understanding of the Viking Age. And of course, here we have the elephant in the room because we have no findings of drums from the Viking Age. And that makes no sense at all that this is the only place in the whole world where we didn't have drums in the Viking Age. But of course, it's a very thin skin and the wood, it would very easily disappear. So I hope that one day we will find some remains from the drums so we finally can say, yes, they had drums in the Viking Age. Yeah. Some of you might've been wondering about instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy and the jaw's harp that with their hauntingly raw and primal drone-like sounds really speaks to something very old and very easily blends into the soundscapes that we imagined for the Viking Age. But the earliest form of the hurdy-gurdy is depicted on paintings dating back to the 11th and 12th century from Southern Europe in a Christian setting. And the jaw's harp appear a bit later in Scandinavia. And as with all kinds of reenactment and reconstruction, there is a certain room for interpretation and guesswork. And every time new archaeological progress is done, there is a real chance to learn something new and maybe find the missing pieces of the puzzle. So what did the Viking Age really sound like? That is a question that I often ask myself. There is, of course, the science of farming and animals, the nature, the blacksmith hammering the iron on the anvil, the axes working in the timber, the crackling fire, and the sound of clay cups and fine glassware, and people sharing songs and stories. But what about music? I think we all have our own idea about what the Viking Age might have sounded like. Popular culture does for sure. But as we know from movies and theatre and even our own social gatherings and entertainment, music serves a vital role in setting the mood and ensuring that we go through certain feelings and by lifting up the spirit. We have some written down sources. There's a description from two Arabic diplomats. One went up to Hezeby and he wrote everything down that he observed about the Scandinavians there. And one thing he mentioned that they were singing and making some kind of music and he described it as like dogs howling and fighting. He really thought it sounded awful. And there was another Arabic diplomat who visited some Scandinavians in the... I think it was Stav Ulvadograd and he also described the awful sounds that the Vikings made. Very beautiful people, but the music and the singing was horrible. So that's... So yeah. When creating music to accompany or depict the Viking Age in living pictures, do you strictly follow the scarce archaeological evidence and guess the scales and the rhythms in order to be as authentic as possible? Or do you find inspiration in the history but freely interpret the signs and the timbres to fit in and emphasize or enforce what you see? I suppose it must be a matter of personal choice but I am very curious to hear what you think. So let me know in the comments below what you think about this and I look forward hearing from you. Well, we have actually some recordings from some sagas where they are telling that under a feast by a jarl or king it's very common that during the feasting and the celebration that a skjald or a bard in English would play the lyre and recite poetry and make songs and stories. But it was also very common that you would pass the lyre around so it was actually expected that you would perform a poem or a song on the lyre. As I always say, give people a lyre and after five minutes they can make a little tune. Yes, so here with plugging the strings with my thumb using one as a drone, that kind of works, I think. But I've seen you also... I saw you were also almost making chords by blocking some of the strings and then playing all of them almost or... Then you can combine the strum and plucking and then the picking, you can... Yeah, it is quite intuitive but again, with the cold fingers here and getting to know it, I can see what you mean. And actually, you overcomplicate it for the beginning. Now try to make the strumming. It's a Viking Age jam session here. Wow, this is amazing. And these two together, it's... We could be going on here for hours, Jens. Exactly, that's... I know you are a musician too and you know when you get an instrument in your hand and you just sit and time goes by and flies away, so... One of the first times I talked to you, I was fascinated. I was lured in by the sound of the lyre here and I have talked to you before about it at some point trying to build one of these my own and I think after today, I feel like, yes, I need to do it. You have to, you just have to. I have to, yeah. So I will get back to you at some point and ask for some advice to see if I can make a reconstruction for my own. I can really imagine myself getting to know this kind of instrument for a longer time, so... We have now learned about some of the different instruments that Jens have reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and we have heard the sound they can produce. Sometimes haunting and melancholic and sometimes uplifting and easy. As you might have heard, the sounds and music in this video is a variation of modern interpretations and music that fits into the Viking idea. And then, of course, the real historical sounds from reconstructed instruments. Jens has his own channel here on YouTube as well and I highly recommend you to go and check it out. He goes into further detail on the various instruments and also other types and kinds of medieval instruments than the ones we have seen here today. And Jens also made some recordings using only his reconstructed instruments to give you an idea of how the Viking Age music could have sounded. I will put a link below, so go check it out and support his work by subscribing and getting involved with the videos. I have to tell you that I'm very, very grateful that you wanted to meet me here in the Viking time of Riga. It was a pleasure, it was a pleasure. For me as well, and I must admit to hear all this information and to learn these things from you and to have it in this kind of setting I must admit it had really helped me understand a lot more of the different types of instruments both the wind instruments we talked about earlier and of course the stringed and the bowed instruments and then the curious thing about the drum. But I'm definitely going to walk out of here with a bigger, I think a bigger understanding with these magical sounds in my head when I walk out of here and have a new and more variated soundscape of what I think the Viking Age sounded like. So thank you so much, Jens. I want to say a huge thank you to Ribe Viking Center for letting me make this video here. This place is very important to me and I am very attached to the place through my activities as a reenactor and with our local Viking Fight Group. I thought it would be fitting to meet with Jens here and fortunately for us it was possible. If you happen to be in Denmark be sure to come and visit Ribe Viking Center. See it for yourself because it is one of the best places to experience the Viking Age in the whole world. If you want to support the channel in other ways consider visiting my Patreon page. In Patreon you can sign up for monthly membership and there is early access to some of the YouTube videos. There is special posts about behind the scenes kind of things other projects that will not make it to YouTube and there is of course also some exclusive content videos from places I've been or other Viking projects that are not available on YouTube. So for a small monthly donation you can become a member and get access to all of this. 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